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List:       ntop
Subject:    [Ntop] Opening up ntop
From:       Luca Deri <deri () ntop ! org>
Date:       2008-06-25 13:31:25
Message-ID: 7A30333B-3B36-40ED-9D81-2DBF7122DCBE () ntop ! org
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Dear all
I want to share with you some ideas that I have in mind since a few  
months. After 10 years of ntop (as project I mean, not just an  
application) I believe there's a need to tackle some rough edges. In  
particular, the main problem I see is that ntop is perceived as an  
application I mostly develop and (beside very few users) you use with  
limited (if any) contribution in terms of code development. In a  
nutshell I can expect bug reports but no code. IMHO this is due to two  
reasons. First, is my personal failure to build a real ntop developer  
community (I'll came to this argument later in this email) and second  
because ntop is not simple to hack for everyone.

Even if I'm not an open-source expert, I believe that in order to  
increase the number of people that can contribute to the project as  
developers, is to reduce the amount of knowledge needed. For this  
reason, as you might have noticed in the past weeks, I have started to  
implement a Perl (more languages will follow if there's a request from  
the community) interface that allows users to become developers. I  
envisage (this in a few months as soon as the API is stable) the  
creation of a ntop contribution site where users contribute with perl  
scripts. My vision is to turn ntop into an engine, with a default web  
GUI (the one you know) but with the ability to have a richer user  
experience by means of an perl scripts. If this move will succeed, I  
hope that many people will contribute and that development will be  
parallelized. Done that, some other parts need to be open but this is  
perhaps too early to discuss.

ntop as a community. This is certainly a weak point of the project. I  
believe that the core ntop team (that's basically me) need to be  
enlarged by establishing responsibilities/duties, commit to them, and  
avoiding that the whole project would depend on me. I have no clue how  
to achieve this. I've asked some people around, and I would like to  
come up with a response at the end of the summer. I need your  
contribution here both in terms of ideas and contribution to the  
project.

Please send me your thoughts. The ultimate goal is to allow ntop to  
grow both in terms of application and community.

Cheers Luca
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